Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(10)

Mira smiled. “They do.”

“So it’s likely one or more of the vics had friends, maybe were friends. It’s possible we’ll find someone who was friends with a vic, and saw or heard something. We don’t have names, yet, but we have lines to tug.”

She sat again when Mira left, looked at the list of missing girls.

And began to tug.

She’d eliminated a handful—too tall to match the recovered remains—when Peabody poked in.

“I’ve got a couple names.”

“I’ve got hundreds.”

Confused, Peabody looked at the screen. “Oh, missing girls. Man, that’s just sad. But I’ve got a couple of names associated with the building during the time in question. Philadelphia Jones, Nashville Jones—siblings. They ran a youth halfway house/rehab center in the building, according to what Roarke dug up, from May of 2041 to September of 2045. They moved to another facility, one donated to them by a Tiffany Brigham Bittmore. They’re still there, heading up the Higher Power Cleansing Center for Youths.”

“First, who names somebody after a city?”

“They have a sister, Selma—I’m thinking Alabama—who lives in Australia, and had a brother, Montclair, who died shortly after they switched buildings. He was on a missionary trip to Africa, and got mostly eaten by a lion.”

“Huh. That’s something you don’t hear every day.”

“I’ve decided being eaten alive by anything is my last choice of causes of death.”

“What’s first choice?”

“Kicking it at two hundred and twenty, minutes after being sexually satisfied by my thirty-five-year-old Spanish lover, and his twin brother.”

“There’s something to be said for that,” Eve decided. “Who owned the building during the Joneses’ time?”

“They did, sort of. In that they struggled to pay a mortgage on it, and the bills that come with a decrepit building in New York. They defaulted, and the bank took it over, eventually. Then the bank eventually sold it. I’ve got that name, too, but it’s looking like this little company bought it with the idea of pulling in investors so they could rehab it into a handful of fancy apartments. That fell through, and they eventually sold it at a loss to the group Roarke bought it from, who also lost money on the deal.”

“Bad luck building.”

Peabody looked at the board, the crime scene photos. “It sure as hell seems like it.”

“Well. Let’s go talk to Pittsburgh and Tennessee.”

“Philadephia and Nashville.”

“Close enough.”

• • •

Higher Power Cleansing Center for Youths made its base in a tidy, four-story building just below the hip edge of the East Village. The short stretch on Delancey had rejected the Village’s artistic edge, and just missed the Bowery’s late twentieth-century facelift—and the bombings, pillaging, and vandalism that had infected its neighbors during the Urbans.

Most of the buildings here were old, some rehabbed, some gentrified, others defiantly clinging to their shabby urban shells.

The whitewashed brick building boasted a tiny courtyard where a scatter of short shrubs shivered in the cold. A couple of teenagers, impervious to that cold, sat on a stone bench playing with their PPCs.

Eve passed them on the way to the front entrance. Both wore HPCCY hooded sweatshirts, sported various face and ear piercings, and identical expressions of suspicious disapproval.

Street vets already, smelling cop, she concluded.

At her steady gaze, their expressions shifted to cocky smirks, but she noted the girl—or she assumed girl—slid her hand into her companion’s.

She heard the hoarse whispers, the quick giggle (definitely female) behind her as she and Peabody climbed the trio of steps to the front door.

Security there included cam, palm plate, and swipe unit. She pressed the buzzer, over which a sign helpfully advised: PLEASE PRESS THE BUZZER.

“A clean and healthy day to you. How can we help?”

“Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody, NYPSD. We’re here to speak with Philadelphia and Nashville Jones.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t see your names on Ms. Jones’s or Mr. Jones’s appointment books today.”

Eve pulled out her badge. “This is my appointment.”

“Of course. Would you please put your palm to the plate for verification of ID?”

Eve complied, waited for the scan.

“Thank you, Lieutenant Dallas. I’m happy to buzz you in.”

There was indeed a long buzz, followed by the clack of locks opening. Eve pushed the door open, entered a narrow lobby with an offshoot of rooms and hallways presumably to other rooms on either side, and a set of stairs jogging up.

A woman rose from a desk at the rear of the room, smiling as she crossed a buff-colored tile floor.

Matronly was the only description given her old-fashioned bubble of shoe-black hair, the dowdy pink sweater over a floral dress, the sensible shoes.

“Welcome to Higher Power Cleansing Center for Youths. I’m Matron Shivitz.”

Fits, Eve thought. “We need to speak with Jones and Jones.”

“Yes, yes, so you said. I’d love to be able to tell them what you’re here to speak to them about.”